Learning, Lighting and Color: Lighting Design for Schools and Universities in the 21st Century

Fielding, Randall

DesignShare (NJ1)

Uniform illumination levels in the classroom and focused brightness on the "teaching wall" made good sense for students in Henry Ford's era. If you were training to take your place on the assembly line, you needed to focus on the work at hand and ahead to your supervisor, but the future no longer belongs to students who look only straight ahead. In a world where advanced degrees in professional disciplines are rapidly becoming a commodity, prosperity belongs to individuals with the ability to react with agility to unpredictable market forces, data, and events. Successful schools and universities are adapting their offerings to learner-centered, rather than teacher or curriculum-centered, modes of delivery. The paradigm is no longer about delivering information, but in nurturing a broad array of learning styles and experiences. Many of the environments for learning have not caught up with these approaches to educational delivery. When working with architects and lighting designers, even visionary educators often ask for the same old classroom, with a few bells and whistles added, such as new carpeting, a ceiling mounted data projector, and extra electrical outlets. However, an effective learning environment in the 21st century has little in common with the rows of classrooms and desks or child factories of the industrial or information age. Fielding dispels seven myths about color and lighting in educational architecture: (1) Uniform brightness level; (2) Primary colors for children; (3) Red incites aggression, green is calming; (4) Neutral colors are best; (5) It's best to use all the same lamps; (6) It's best not to use natural light in gymnasiums; and (7) Performance spaces should not have any windows, advocating the identification of patterns of learning activity and design prior to laying out a building as a good way to ensure a lighting solution that takes advantage of the full range of human capabilities. This article comments on the role of lighting in: (1) Vistas, Movement, and Lighting Design Principles; (2) Full-Spectrum Lighting; (3) Welcoming Entry; and (4) Science Lab Areas. [This article was co-published in German and English by PLD -- the official magazine of the European Lighting Designers' Association(ELDA) and the International Association of Lighting Designers(IALD).]